Giving Impact Report
2023-2024
Dear Friends,
Your contributions to Berkeley Law’s outstanding scholarship, teaching, and public service inspires us to do more every day. Thank you for supporting our students, our faculty, and our programs. Because of you, we remain an outstanding law school.
Each year, our Giving Impact Report shows how your philanthropy empowers the school’s values and helps prepare the next generation of Berkeley lawyers. The commitment to using law to improve society animates the work of our clinics and centers and the teaching in our classrooms. I want to celebrate you — the community of Berkeley Law supporters — because you outdid yourselves in fiscal year 2024, with gifts and pledges surpassing $35 million for the first time ever.
I cannot overstate the importance of your support. Only about 7% of our revenue comes from the state, and 60% of our revenue comes from tuition. Support from our alumni and friends is essential to every aspect of our work.
You’ll find a reflection of our mission and priorities in the following pages. They highlight the tremendous impact of your philanthropy on our school and the larger community, from student support and faculty chairs to criminal justice reform and local environmental legal victories. I encourage you to follow our social media and our online news page (law.berkeley.edu/news) for more examples of students, faculty, and staff turning possibilities into reality.
We know the new year will bring new challenges, and the campus and the law school face a very difficult budget forecast. To bolster the excellence we stand for, we will depend more than ever on your generosity. Your support for Berkeley Law truly makes a huge difference.
With enormous gratitude, Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
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Fiscal year 2024: July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024
3,396
Donor households
20.9%
School operating budget financed through gifts and endowment income $35,490,699 Raised through philanthropy 15.3%* J.D. alumni giving participation rate
*Includes outright gifts, pledges, or pledge payments to all law funds. If a couple are both law grads, they are counted as two donors, not one.
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Darius Riley
$105,556
Academic-year 2023-2024 full cost of attendance for J.D. candidates, including tuition, fees, books, health insurance, and estimated living expenses (CA residents)
$162,543
Average total debt load for Class of 2024 graduates
$28,551,219
School’s investment in student support: scholarships, loan repayment assistance, and summer public interest fellowships in fiscal year 2024
Berkeley Law Scholarship Fund
Thanks to the combined philanthropy of generations of alumni who give at all levels, the Berkeley Law Scholarship Fund helps exceptional students reach their potential and enrich our community. In addition to directly impacting the recipients’ lives, these donors help uphold the school’s public mission.
For Gabriela Martinez ’25, the fund’s support has been crucial in paving her path to a public defense career. She completed an internship with the San Francisco Public Defender, and says co-leading the student group Defenders at Berkeley “has had an incredible impact on my experience at Berkeley Law” and that without it “my goal of becoming a public defender would feel out of reach.”
Anan Hafez ’25 came to law school with experience in community organizing, fundraising, data analysis, and policy research aimed at tackling systemic inequalities. President of Berkeley Law’s Digital Rights Project, he hopes to provide legal counsel to technology companies after graduating. Hafez says donor generosity enables him to “fully embrace all the opportunities Berkeley provides without financial burden, and focus on preparing to achieve my goal of purpose-driven and innovative corporate legal work.”
Julia Herrmann ’24 notes that she likely wouldn’t have attended Berkeley Law without her pivotal scholarship package. Now, she relishes how the school “has changed the vision of my career and the trajectory of my life for the better, and expanded my vision of the law, the policy landscape, and my own future. Thank you for your support — I hope to pay it forward one day.”
(Left to right) Nina PerezMorales ’25, Anan Hafez ’25, and Madison Lee ’25 collaborate in the Digital Rights Project.
by Laurie
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Frasier
Andrea Roth
Barry Tarlow Chancellor’s Chair in Criminal Justice
Amanda Tyler
Thomas David
& Judith Swope
Clark Professor of Constitutional Law
Supporting Endowed Chairs
Endowed faculty chairs help Berkeley Law avoid playing musical chairs amid other schools’ continued efforts to poach our world-class professors. Here are two recent examples of new donor-funded professorships that allow us to honor stellar faculty with prestigious chairs.
Professor Andrea Roth, a groundbreaking criminal law and evidence scholar, received the Barry Tarlow Chancellor’s Chair in Criminal Justice — created by a $5.5 million gift from the renowned defense lawyer’s estate.
Roth teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Forensic Evidence, and Evidence, and is a Berkeley Center for Law & Technology faculty co-director. A former public defender who co-founded a practice group that studied and litigated forensic DNA typing, Roth chairs UC Berkeley’s Committee on Teaching.
She won the 2016 Berkeley Law Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction, the 2017 campus-wide Prytanean Faculty Award honoring a pre-tenure female professor for excellence in scholarship and mentoring, and UC Berkeley’s 2019 Distinguished Teaching Award.
Professor Amanda L. Tyler was named the Thomas David & Judith Swope Clark Professor of Constitutional Law. There will also be a new annual constitutional interpretation symposium under the same name, resulting from a legacy donation by Tom Clark ’72 honoring his late wife.
Berkeley Law’s 2020 Rutter Award winner, Tyler focuses her research and teaching on the Supreme Court, federal courts, constitutional law, legal history, civil procedure, and statutory interpretation.
A past chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Federal Courts Section, Tyler is a leading authority on habeas corpus. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and they co-authored a book that grew from Tyler interviewing Ginsburg during her 2019 visit to Berkeley.
CLINICS
Students are integral to the Clinical Program’s mission to advance racial, economic, and social justice.
The program includes 14 clinics — six at the law school and eight at the East Bay Community Law Center — led by faculty members with deep subject matter expertise and a passion for teaching and justice. Clinic seminars offer students a foundation in law and practice, while hands-on client work builds critical lawyering skills.
Donor support is crucial for Dean Chemerinsky’s goal of expanding the Clinical Program to ensure every student who wants to can participate.
225+
Students participated in clinics last school year
3,600+ Hours of collective student clinic work each week (16-22 per student)
4 Clinical professors to be added in the next four years
3 New in-house clinics to be added in the next four years
Bradley Angel (speaking) of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice and organizer Leotis Martin (far right) talk to Environmental Law Clinic Supervising Attorney Steve Castleman (back to camera) and clinic students about radioactive contamination at Hunters Point.
Death Penalty Clinic
East Bay Community Law Center
Environmental Law Clinic
Global Rights Innovation
Lab Clinic (starting in spring 2025)
Human Rights Clinic
Policy Advocacy Clinic
Samuelson Law, Technology & Public
Policy Clinic
Supporting the Clinical Program
Donor support is crucial to the expanding Clinical Program, which plans to add two offerings for 1Ls this spring and three clinics in the next four years, two of which will focus on racial justice and family defense.
A multiyear $250,000 gift to the Environmental Law Clinic from Mitch Zuklie ’96 and the Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe law firm he helms has supported a recent run of groundbreaking work.
Clinic students wrote a communication to the United Nations Human Rights Commission with grassroots group Clean Cape Fear, alleging that DuPont and Chemours have polluted the lower Cape Fear River in North Carolina with toxic PFAS chemicals for decades. The U.N.’s response generated enough pressure that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew approval for the U.S. disposal of 4 million pounds of PFAS waste from Europe.
Also, with partner Communities for a Better Environment, the clinic settled litigation against the Bay Area Air Quality Management District that will accelerate pollution controls for the 40 most-polluting facilities across its nine-county region.
And just this summer, the clinic filed a lawsuit on behalf of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice over radioactive waste at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard against the U.S. Navy and the EPA. It has already made headlines and prompted an agency policy reversal. The shipyard is slated for the development of more than 10,000 homes.
A recent $200,000 gift from the Grantham Foundation will enable the clinic to take on science-intensive projects that require equipment, field sampling, and laboratory analysis to prove clients’ claims about environmental contamination. “This gift helps us address the scourge of toxic chemicals, many of them petroleum-based, that account for so much needless environmental illness, from asthma to cancer,” says clinic Director Claudia Polsky ’96. “We are humbled and grateful for the vote of confidence these substantial gifts represent.”
CENTERS
At Berkeley Law, research is part of our DNA.
The school hosts 29 research centers and initiatives where faculty and researchers seek solutions to wide-ranging challenges, from developing sound corporate governance strategies to combating climate change to safeguarding intellectual property in the global economy.
Unrestricted gifts to the Berkeley Law Fund enable the school to support our centers, many of which also receive direct support from donors.
• Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice
• Berkeley Center for Law & Business
• Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
• Berkeley Center for Private Law Theory
• Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law
• Berkeley Judicial Institute
• Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy & Public Finance
• California Constitution Center
• Center for Indigenous Law & Justice
• Center for Law, Energy & the Environment
• Center for Law & Work
• Center on Race, Sexuality & Culture
• Center on Reproductive Rights & Justice
• Center for the Study of Law & Society
• Civil Justice Research Initiative
• Criminal Law & Justice Center
• Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law & Israel Studies
• Christopher Edley Jr. Center on Law & Democracy
• Election Administration Research Center
• Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
• Human Rights Center
• Institute for Legal Research
• Kadish Center for Morality, Law & Public Affairs
• Korea Law Center
• Law, Economics & Politics Center
• Honorable G. William & Ariadna Miller Institute for Global Challenges & the Law
• Public Law & Policy Program
• Robbins Collection & Research Center
• Statewide Database
Criminal Law & Justice
Center Executive Director
Chesa Boudin and Chloe Pan ’24
Elevating Public Interest Careers
Our surging criminal justice program got another boost with this year’s launch of the Chris Larsen Justice Fellowship. Administered by the school’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, and supported by a donation made through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, it funds new graduates in their first year of public interest work.
The inaugural fellows — Class of 2024 members Emily Hunt, Alyssa Meurer, Sandhya Nadadur, and Chloe Pan — begin work this fall with a sponsoring organization. They will write mid-year and year-end fellowship reports, attend a conference, and receive up to $60,500 in salary support and funds to help defray bar exam and health care costs.
Hunt is a California Racial Justice Act attorney at the Solano County Public Defender’s Office. Meurer is helping incarcerated people understand their legal rights at the Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago. Nadadur helps Dolores Street Community Services in San Francisco serve survivors of trafficking and intimate partner violence who face deportation because of crimes they committed as a result of their traumatic experiences. Pan joins the District of Columbia Office of the Solicitor General, focusing on its multistate litigation and amicus practice and writing federal appellate briefs advocating for reasonable gun regulations.
Shaped by her experiences growing up as the eldest daughter in a low-income, first-generation immigrant family, Pan has wanted to be an attorney since age 12. “Seeing so many of my loved ones struggle to access the most basic government services … made me realize that I wanted to be the advocate I wish my community had,” she says. “That’s why I’m especially grateful for this fellowship opportunity, which will let me work on a wide range of issues to do just that.”
Thank you to our Alumni Workplace Challenge Volunteers!
Berkeley Law’s annual workplace giving program owes its success to the 79 Alumni Workplace Challenge captains — at 65 law firms and companies — who ran a successful 2024 campaign that yielded over $900,000 from 529 donors. We are grateful for their advocacy and that of the program’s co-chairs, Berkeley Law Alumni Association Fundraising Chair Michael Charlson ’85 (Vinson & Elkins LLP), Kurt Kurzenhauser ’19 (Skadden), Theresa Lee ’03 (Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP), Anna Remis ’07 (Sidley Austin LLP), and David Zapolsky ’88 (Amazon.com, Inc.).
We are delighted to recognize the organizations that placed at the top of their mod in the fiscal year 2024 campaign as well as the captains who led the charge.
Mod A | 41+ alumni
O’Melveny & Myers LLP: Anna Pletcher ’05 & Katie Sinclair ’20
Mod B | 30-40 alumni
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP: Rachel Horsch ’99, Ann Kim ’22 & Theresa Lee ’03
Mod C | 20-29 alumni
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP: Ken Payson ’96
Mod D | 15-19 alumni
Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP*: Caitlin Brown ’17 & Osa Wolff ’97
Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP*: Jimmy Purvis ’11 & Andrea Saunders Rifenbark ’03
Mod E | 10-14 alumni
Salesforce.com, Inc.: Gail Dolton ’86
Mod F | 7-9 alumni
Baker Botts LLP: Kevin Chiu ’18, Sam Dibble ’98 & Allison Mallick ’10
Fish & Richardson PC: Kate Prescott ’01
Mod G | 2-6 alumni
Lane Powell PC*: Lisa Poplawski ’11
Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger*: Spencer Pahlke ’07
*Organizations that achieved a 100% participation rate among their Berkeley Law alumni employees.
Challenge 2024
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Amazon.com, Inc.
Arnold & Porter
Baker Botts LLP
Bartko Zankel Bunzel &
Miller
Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
Cooley LLP
Cox Castle & Nicholson LLP
Crowell & Moring LLP
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Dentons US LLP
DLA Piper
Ervin Cohen & Jessup
Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Farella Braun + Martel LLP
Fenwick & West LLP
Fish & Richardson PC
Freshfields Bruckhaus
Deringer
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
LLP
Goodwin Procter LLP
Google LLC
Greenberg Traurig LLP
Gunderson Dettmer Stough
Villeneuve Franklin &
Hachigian
Hanson Bridgett LLP
Hogan Lovells
Jenner & Block LLP
Jones Day
K&L Gates LLP
King & Spalding LLP
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Lane Powell PC
Latham & Watkins LLP
Lieff Cabraser Heimann &
Bernstein LLP
Lyft
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP
McDermott Will & Emery
Microsoft Corporation
Milbank LLP
Miller Nash LLP
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Morrison & Foerster LLP
Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Paul Hastings LLP
Perkins Coie LLP
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
Proskauer Rose LLP
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP
Ropes & Gray LLP
Salesforce.com, Inc.
Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP
Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP
Sidley Austin LLP
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Uber
Venable LLP
Vinson & Elkins LLP
Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger
Wilmer Cutler Pickering
Hale and Dorr LLP
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Thank you to our Alumni Volunteers
Volunteers are one of Berkeley Law’s great assets. Their reach is far and wide, from student recruitment to alumni networking events around the globe. Thanks to all of our graduates and friends who devoted time and energy to Berkeley Law during this last year.
• Admitted students recruitment
• Advisory boards for many of the law school’s research centers
• Alumni Guide program
• Alumni Workplace Challenge fundraising campaign captains
• Berkeley Law Alumni Association Board of Directors
• Career mentoring
• Distinguished speakers
• Journal and student organization alumni volunteers
• Regional alumni engagement chapters (REACh) leadership
Berkeley Law Alumni Association 2023-2024
Thank you to our Board of Directors
Cara Sandberg ’12, President and Co-Chair
Admitted Student Outreach/Recruitment Committee
Carly O’Halloran Alameda ’06, Past President
Charles Breyer ’66
Angélica César ’25, Student Representative
Caleb Charles ’25, Student Representative
Michael Charlson ’85, Chair, Fundraising Committee
Paul Clark ’80
Holly Doremus ’91, Faculty Representative
Jami Floyd ’89
Terry Friedman ’76, Co-Chair, Mentorship Committee
Ricardo García ’95
Joanna Goldenstein ’97
Lillian Hardy ’06
Jeffrey Harleston ’88
Noah Ickowitz ’17, Co-Chair, Regional Chapters
Yury Kapgan ’01, Co-Vice President and Co-Chair, Regional Chapters
Erika Kelton ’87
Kenton King ’87, Secretary
David Larwood ’86
Monique Liburd ’08
Jose Luis Lopez, ’09
Tam Ma ’11, Co-Vice President
Liwen Mah ’05, Co-Chair, Admitted Student Outreach/Recruitment Committee
Heather Mewes ’99
Nicole Ozer ’03
Spencer Pahlke ’07
Smita Rajmohan ’14, Co-Chair, Mentorship Committee
Irma Rodriguez Moisa ’92
Jennifer Romano ’97
Armilla Staley-Ngomo ’08
Quyen Ta ’03
Bryant Yang ’07
Special thanks to outgoing members Carly O’Halloran Alameda, Michael Charlson, Paul Clark, and Jose Luis Lopez for their years of service on the board of directors.
by Brittany
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Hosea-Small
Your unrestricted support of our core needs gives the dean budget flexibility and demonstrates our shared vision of the essential Berkeley Law experience. Thank you for your trust.
$5,466,531
In Support of Core Needs in Fiscal Year 2024
$5,029,748 Berkeley Law Fund: Schoolwide Support
$285,229 Berkeley Law Scholarship Fund
$89,391 Summer Public Interest Fellowship Fund
$62,164 Clinical Program Fund
Photo by Darius Riley
Expenses by Category
Financial Aid is a top priority and essential to our public mission. We spent $28.5 million in fiscal year 2024, more than twice the $10.5 million we spent in 2010.
University of California, Berkeley
School of Law
Development & Alumni Relations
224 Law Building
Berkeley, CA 94720-7200
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Facebook: UCBerkeleyLaw
TikTok: @ucberkeleylaw
Students on cover (left to right): Kevin Andrews ’26, Faye Zou ’26, Caillie Roach ’26, William Ciel ’26, Hannah Pigg ’26, McKenzie Chen ’26, Iris Haik ’26.
by
Darius Riley
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